


The Kind of Guy Who Laughs at Funerals

by orphan_account



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Character Study, Gen, God Complex, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 05:00:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9968756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dennis, Mac, and Charlie attend Dooley's funeral after he kills himself. Faced with the finality of his high school friend's death, Dennis contemplates his own mortality.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A short piece I've had on my computer forever that I'm publishing on impulse  
> Despite the fact that Charlie and Dennis seem to have forgotten that Dooley killed himself, I like to imagine that they did attend the funeral and simply repressed it (or stuffed the whole event down with some brown).

Dennis doesn't think about death. Not as he lights his ninth cigarette of the night, certainly not after his fifteenth shot. The night is alive and so is he. Dennis feels so alive as he sinks to his knees and retches into the bar toilet. It feels good to be in pain - he's present then more than ever. Dennis doesn't think about death. Not ever, not even as he's standing over the corpse of an old friend. 

Dennis bows his head and approaches the casket with folded hands and good grace, simply because that is what one is meant to do in these situations. Most people probably fill these silent moments with prayer; Dennis only searches for the place where the bullet ripped through Dooley's skull, presumably like tissue paper. He admires the makeup job done on the body and notes the subtle difference in skin tone from his face and hands and shakes his head slightly. Ammature mistake. He lingers for a moment, feigning grief as he somberly ambles away, tension rolling off his shoulders as he does so. Somewhat desperately, he sweeps the room for the familiar faces of Mac and Charlie, only to come up empty handed. There weren't many people there to begin with, it appeared as though Dooley hadn't made many friends since high school. 

Silently Dennis cursed himself for agreeing to come at all. Dooley hadn't been his friend, not really. He and Psycho Pete had never entirely accepted Dennis into the “Freight Train”, or whatever idiotic name Mac and Charlie called their group before he started hanging out with them. They resented his authority, his higher social standing. After Pete had been sent to the institution, Dooley faded into the background and out of their lives.

Unable to locate his friends and unwilling to make a fool of himself by searching for them, Dennis seats himself in an isolated chair in the back of the room with a clear view of the casket. He likes to watch. He likes seeing how people grieve, how they look when they’re at their most vulnerable, and how pathetic they all look. Even surrounded by a dozen or so teary-eyed mourners, Dennis isn’t touched. These people, all sniveling noses and stifled cries, are beneath him. This isn’t how men are supposed to be remembered. This isn’t how he will be remembered.

He is detached; a solitary vessel sailing in turbulent seas. Even with storm clouds rolling in overhead, the possibility of capsizing never occurs to him. He's unsinkable, invincible. 

Sometimes Dennis thinks about rolling down all windows of his Range Rover and driving into the nearest body of water. He thinks about sinking slowly, not bothering to undo his seatbelt or even take his hands off the steering wheel. Sometimes he thinks about dowsing his and Mac’s shitty apartment with gasoline and lighting a cigarette with them still inside. He thinks about both of them burning there together with no escape. Sometimes he thinks about taking a handful of the pills Frank is always carelessly throwing around and chasing it with a bottle of tequila. He thinks about how he’d position himself on his back, so in the likely event of him vomiting, he would asphyxiate. Slightly undignified, though once the vomit is cleared, at least he’d leave a pretty corpse.

Appearing from seemingly nowhere and disrupting him from his thoughts, Dennis notices Mac standing over him. He looks ridiculous and horrendously out of place - his button up shirt wrinkled and dirty, his hair a rumpled mess sticking out in all directions, and his eyes bloodshot and swollen. Had it been anyone else looking at him, they might have assumed he was crying. It was painfully clear to Dennis that Mac and Charlie had been smoking in the parking lot for the majority of the wake.

"Dude, you’re freaking people out. You've been back here smiling to yourself for like fifteen minutes, what the hell are you doing?" Mac sounds confused and worried, but it may just be the tone he's adopted around Dennis at this point.

"I'm fine," Dennis shrugs.

And he is fine, because Dennis doesn’t think about death. He never does, because he will never die. Not like this - not in a box propped up for display, not with Mac and Charlie getting high in the parking lot, not any of this. When he perishes, all of Philadelphia will know. It's very foundation will shake from the magnitude of the fight he will stage. But it doesn't matter, because gods never die.


End file.
